This account is pending registration confirmation. Please click on the link within the confirmation email previously sent you to complete registration.Need a new registration confirmation email? Click here

AspenBio Finds Fault Afar for Failure

CASTLE ROCK, Co. (
TheStreet) -- I must give props to
AspenBio Pharma(APPY - Get Report). The company's experimental hospital test for appendicitis went up in flames Monday night, but the excuses dished out by management for the whopping failure and setback to Aspen's AppyScore are destined to become instant classics.

Instead, AspenBio management blamed the poor AppyScore test results -- most notably an alarming number of false positives -- on "transportation shipping conditions" of blood samples from the hospital emergency rooms to a central reading laboratory and the length of time it took those samples to make the trip.

Allow me to translate: What AspenBio's management said Monday is that the dog with AppyScore blood samples in its mouth got on a cross-town bus headed to the central laboratory, but the bus driver got lost and the bus' air-conditioning system broke down so by the time the dog got to the lab, the blood samples were cooked, causing the AppyScore test results to read out a diagnosis of appendicitis when in reality the patients were just fine.

If it weren't for that unfortunate screw up, AppyScore would have been golden. Got that? Understand? Good.

Where does AspenBio go from here? Monday night, the company said it would forge ahead with an AppyScore version 2.0 appendicitis test, one that could be administered fully in a hospital emergency room, which theoretically, will eliminate the sample transportation excuses… er, I mean issues… that derailed AppyScore version 1.0.

AspenBio said if all goes well, a pivotal clinical trial of AppyScore 2.0 could start in 2011.

Adam Feuerstein writes regularly for TheStreet.com. In keeping with TSC's editorial policy, he doesn't own or short individual stocks, although he owns stock in TheStreet.com. He also doesn't invest in hedge funds or other private investment partnerships. Feuerstein appreciates your feedback;
click here to send him an email.